Evaluation Question 4 - A2 media studies

1. How did you use media technologies in the
construction and evaluation stages?
During planning and research a range of different media sources were used such
as:
 Blogger
 Youtube
 Word
 Powerpoint
 Slideshare
 Prezi
 Emaze
 Google
 Final cut pro
Research:
When conducting initial research for similar products I mostly used the internet
and search engines via the apple mac. I used Google and YouTube to collate
images and information about the artists that I researched such as The 1975,
Aluna George and Lewis Watson. Search engines also helped significantly when
dealing with problems and issues – searching the problem would generate a
solution meaning I could resolve the issue. Similarly, to begin with I was uncertain
on some parts of the project, such as what made up a digipack. Therefore to
resolve and understand this I used Google to search for similar products and
templates.

2. My phone internet also aided in spontaneous, quick research when access to a
computer was unavailable. The was especially helpful during filming as we were
on set, which was outdoors, therefore we used our phones to stream the song to
help the actor with lyrics and performance.
Out of school hours when I was at home, music channels also helped my
research as I watched different music videos of different genres. This allowed me
to recognise features of different genres and apply this to my product. Similarly,
this helped me to gain an understanding of different shots types, locations and
narrative ideas.

3. Blogger – research and planning:
Blogger is our main source of collating all of our work. This was useful as it
allows us to create different sources of media and then present them all in one
document. We could also keep track of our progress thoroughly throughout as
both our teachers also had access to the blog to give us any feedback or
recommendations. Blogger also has the ability to embed pictures and videos,
allowing us to exhibit where our different sources of inspiration come from.
Blogger was used as our diary throughout this project as I constantly updated it
was ideas and progress after filming shoots and editing.
Microsoft office – research and planning:
Microsoft Excel was a key programme which kept me organised throughout the
project. On excel a tracking document was created by our teachers which had
each task of the project in a chart which we could fill in when completed. As well
as this, it contained a percentage feature which would update when you filled in
work, this enabled me to recognise how much of the project I had completed,
and what was left to be completed. Furthermore, this document also contained a
feedback page where I could record feedback I received from my teachers and
targets which I set myself. This was especially useful as the comments were saved
and easily referenced in future lessons. This also allows me to reflect back easily
at the end of the project to review strengths and weaknesses that I faced.

4. Microsoft word was used continually during the project to write up most forms of
research, planning and evaluation before presenting them in a more creative way.
This was useful as it meant the documents could be transferred via email from
different computers which I would use such as the mac, school computer and
home laptop. Similarly, the drafting process meant that ii could proof read and
edit tasks before they were finalised.

5. Icloud, mobile phone, laptop, imac – research and planning:
My iphone also came in useful during the planning stage of our production as it
was used to plan and organise meeting up with my partner for work planning
and filming as well as to contact our actors.
During several stages of the project, I took pictures on my phone of different
things such as feedback on post-it notes. This meant that I could create audience
feedback posts which helped to improve my work. Also during the filming stage, I
took pictures on my phone and sent them to the computer via icloud – this was
useful to easily and quickly transfer images.

6. Construction –
During the construction stage, the mac was used to operate various software and
editing programmes. The Sony Handycam HDR-CX280E camera was used to film
our music video. We specifically planned to film during the day time so that we
had the best possible lighting for filming as inside light often causes grainy
footage. Along with this we used a tripod to keep our camera stable. After this,
we uploaded our footage to the mac using a firewire and uploaded it to final cut
pro. Here, we created a shot decisions list of footage that would make up the
video, included it in our timeline and edited the video. Adobe Photoshop was
also used in the project to create the album poster and to edit the images for
the digipack. I also used a still Nikon camera to conduct a photoshoot with the
artist which was used for the digipack imagery.

7. Editing –
To edit the video I used Final Cut Pro 10 which is a timeline based video editing
software application. Final Cut pro is good because it contains built in transitions
and sounds which could be used in our video. However, some problems did
occur. After a software update, the programme began to reject and not recognise
our footage. This means that final cut will not allow us to export the video to
other destinations such as
YouTube.